Write as a wry skit where C.S. Lewis, Edwin Friedman, and Murray Bowen explore how the whole universe was designed to draw us deeper into self-differentiating intimacy with God; for every turning away by the God we already know enables turning toward the One we need to grow into.
ChatGPT Prompt
Setting:
The Eagle and Child, Oxford — haunt of the Inklings.
Late afternoon. Fire crackling, rain on the panes. A few dons argue about cricket in the corner.
Three strangers share a wooden table: Lewis, tweed-clad and pipe in hand; Bowen, American psychiatrist with a notebook; Friedman, rabbi-therapist and parish consultant, nursing something that isn’t tea.
Scene 1 – Introductions
LEWIS:
Curious thing, gentlemen. I ordered solitude and was served company.
FRIEDMAN:
That’s how systems work, Professor. Even your loneliness has triangles.
BOWEN:
(emerging from notes)
Triangles stabilize anxiety. The pub is one, the pints another.
LEWIS:
So this is to be psychology by pint? Splendid. Let’s add theology; it sharpens the flavor.
Scene 2 – Faces and Hiddenness
LEWIS:
I’ve been writing about Panim—the Hebrew for “face,” the turning of presence.
But I’ve coined a companion term: Minap—its reversal.
If Panim is the face turned toward, Minap is the face turned away—not in wrath, but in withdrawal, so that we might seek again.
The cosmos, you see, is one long game of divine peek-a-boo.
FRIEDMAN:
Peek-a-boo—the original leadership lab. The parent hides, the child survives the anxiety, and voilà: differentiation of self!
BOWEN:
Exactly. The self forms in the oscillation between presence and absence.
Constant closeness breeds fusion; measured distance breeds maturity.
LEWIS:
So when God hides His Face, He’s not sulking but parenting?
FRIEDMAN:
Precisely. The Deity refuses to over-function. A perfectly non-anxious presence.
LEWIS:
I must remember to mention that at evensong—though perhaps not to the bishop.
Scene 3 – Gethsemane, Family Systems Edition
BOWEN:
Take Gethsemane.
The Son feels abandoned but stays connected. No cutoff, no collapse.
That’s differentiation under pressure.
FRIEDMAN:
A non-anxious presence sweating blood. Model behavior, given the circumstances.
LEWIS:
You make Calvary sound like therapy!
BOWEN:
In a way, it is. The system reorganizes around love rather than fear.
LEWIS:
Then theology and psychiatry share a grammar: the turning of faces, the learning of selves.
Every “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” is the universe taking its next developmental step.
FRIEDMAN:
Exactly. Growth always feels like forsakenness.
Scene 4 – Till We Have Faces
LEWIS:
Ah, but here’s the twist. The hiding of the Face gives us faces of our own.
The Minap is God’s way of handing us a mirror.
BOWEN:
Self-definition through differentiation.
FRIEDMAN:
And the goal is intimacy without fusion.
God wants adults, not infants eternally on His lap.
LEWIS:
You realize, gentlemen, you’ve just psychoanalyzed redemption.
I shall have to write faster before you publish first.
FRIEDMAN:
We’ll send you the case notes.
Scene 5 – Closing Time
(The landlord rings the bell. Rain has stopped. A pale sun peers in—Panim restored.)
LEWIS:
Well, my friends, it seems the Face has turned toward us again.
BOWEN:
Yes. Time to re-enter the system.
FRIEDMAN:
And remember: keep your triangles clean.
LEWIS:
(lifting his glass)
To the cosmic peek-a-boo—
and to the God who hides only so we may learn to seek.
They clink glasses. The light brightens. Curtain.
Notes & Allusions
- Panim / Minap: Derived from Hebrew פָּנִים (panim, “face”) and a coined reversal, minap, symbolizing divine concealment. Compare hester panim—“the hiding of the Face”—in Deuteronomy 31:17–18.
- Exodus 33 Paradox: God speaks with Moses “face to face” (Exodus 33:11) yet declares “no one may see My face and live” (Exodus 33:20).
- The Hidden Face in Literature: Compare Lewis’s Till We Have Faces (1956), which dramatizes the unveiling of the true self through divine hiddenness.
- Divine Hiddenness Theme: See Isaiah 45:15, “Truly, you are a God who hides Himself.”
- Developmental Parallel: In child psychology, object permanence parallels the growth of faith: learning that the unseen still exists.
- Systemic Echoes: Family systems theory (Bowen) and adaptive leadership (Friedman) emphasize differentiation within emotional systems.
- Spiritual Resonances:
- The Dark Night of the Soul – John of the Cross
- Waiting for God – Simone Weil
- I and Thou – Martin Buber
- The Cloud of Unknowing – Anonymous medieval text
References & Further Reading
- C.S. Lewis – Till We Have Faces (1956)
- Edwin H. Friedman – Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (1985)
- Murray Bowen – Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (1978)
- The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family
© Imagined dialogue for creative and educational purposes.
Radically Happy 
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